Bill Belichick's New England Patriots war room enters the 2018 NFL draft with five selections over the first three rounds. (AP Photo/Todd Kirkland)

It isn’t controversial to say that the New England Patriots have needs entering the 2018 NFL draft. All teams do.

A developmental quarterback behind Tom Brady, a post-Nate Solder starter at left tackle, a tight end capable of lessening Rob Gronkowski’s workload, or a sideline-to-sideline linebacker to pair with the gap-busting Dont’a Hightower would all be convenient places to start. Maybe even a running back to fill the larger-than-life-size void left by the 5-foot-8, 195-pound Dion Lewis.

If only it was that easy.

Filling out draft cards to match those positions at Nos. 23, 31, 43 and 63 overall and calling it good isn’t how the process works.

“In the end, you can’t manufacture players,” Bill Belichick said during his pre-draft press conference Friday at Gillette Stadium, via Patriots.com. “You can’t manufacture a guy. It’s a name on the board right now. Until that player gets on the field and performs, then you never really know for sure what that’s going to be.”

Roster needs are relative. So is player value. Sometimes they match a draft class’s perceived strengths and most of the time they don’t.

Belichick has kept his focus on the latter over the last 18 drafts in Foxborough. And it isn’t as if he’s the only football mind in that camp entering April 26.

“The whole draft-need thing – I don’t really understand that,” said the Patriots head coach. “I mean, you put a card up on the board, that doesn’t mean the guy’s a good player. I think it’s important to acquire good players and wherever they are.”

Finding good players wherever they are might mean New England leaves the first few rounds of the draft with none of the aforementioned positions addressed. Perhaps another wide receiver, interior offensive lineman, defensive tackle or safety will be taken instead despite all those spots appearing to be on firmer short-term ground.

Perhaps those watching at home will have never heard of player taken. Or, perhaps the player taken will have fallen farther than they should have, like defensive tackle Malcom Brown, defensive end Trey Flowers and guard Shaq Mason all did back in 2015.

Trey Flowers and Malcom Brown, taken No. 101 and No. 32 overall in the 2015 draft, respectively, have started a combined 59 games on New England's defensive line. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Some picks may not make as much sense at the time. Some may not work out down the road, either.

Although in Belichick’s prism, exploiting market inefficiencies is the primary way to build depth. At its best, it’s kind of like going to the grocery store for the after-Thanksgiving discount on whole turkeys when there’s already another 10-pounder in the freezer.

“If you take a player at a position that you might so-called need, but he’s not good enough to fill that need, then it’s a wasted pick,” said Belichick, who has drafted 157 players, including 17 eventual Pro Bowlers and 11 first-team All-Pros since 2000, per Pro Football Reference. “So I don’t really understand the whole need thing. I understand player value, and that’s what we try to go by.”

New England will have ample opportunities to stay by it after not drafting until the third round, at No. 83 overall, last year and the end of the second round, at No. 60 overall, the year prior. Owning five top-95 picks and eight altogether means more flexibility.

But that doesn’t change the approach. According to Belichick, it just changes the level of time invested in certain prospects that New England normally wouldn’t have the draft capital to access.

“Going into those past two drafts, I would say we were able to eliminate a number of players just based on where we were selecting,” Belichick noted, having drafted Youngstown State pass-rusher Derek Rivers with the top pick left in 2017 and Alabama cornerback Cyrus Jones in 2016. “This year is a little bit different than that. We really need to know the draft from top to bottom, and potentially, I’d say there’s a handful of players that are probably out of reach. But realistically, just about everybody’s in play other than a handful of guys.”

The Patriots’ list of draftable players has historically been shorter than most. The vertical and horizontal boards continue to whittle and fluctuate as more information is collected and weighed. Right now, with the NFL Scouting Combine’s medical re-checks hitting the wire, Belichick estimates that only about 2% of the work remains undone.

Now it’s about using a fine-tooth comb to split hairs and deliberate rankings across different positions.

“You start talking about the third guard and the second corner, the third guard and the eighth corner, or however those grades line up,” Belichick said of the final step. “Or, you talk about players that are specialty-type players – role players that are maybe very good at a certain role but they’re not three-down players. What are their values relative to other players who may be three-down players with a lesser skillset?”

New England will never have all the correct answers. But there will be more than educated guesses for Belichick, director of player personnel Nick Caserio, director of college scouting Monti Ossenfort and Co. to go from in the coming weeks.

“The draft process, I look at it like a jigsaw puzzle,” Belichick said. “It’s got like a hundred pieces, and each piece has a little bit of a fit, but in the end there are a lot of pieces.”

And how well those pieces fit means more than the position each belongs to.

I’ve written about the NFL and the New England Patriots since 2012, and my work has been featured on Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NEPatriotsDraft, MassLive, 247Sports, CBS Sports and SB Nation’s Pats Pulpit over that span. I am a graduate of the University of New Hampshi...